Bush to FEMA Law: Drop Dead!

He’s done it again: After signing into law a bill that would mandate minimum requirements for the new FEMA director, Bush added a “signing statement” in which he declared those requirements null and invalid.

Nevertheless, President Bush has “asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey” the law. From the statement released by the President:

Section 503(c)(2) vests in the President authority to appoint the Administrator, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the President may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office. The executive branch shall construe section 503(c)(2) in a manner consistent with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

It’s unclear how requiring someone to have five years of management experience and some knowledge of emergency management “rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified.” Georgetown Law School professor Marty Lederman noted, “It’s hard to imagine a more modest and reasonable congressional response to the Michael Brown fiasco,” he said.

You’d also think that after the Mike “Heckuva Job” Brown debacle, Bush would actually take FEMA seriously—not to mention the democratic process of vetoing laws he doesn’t approve of, rather than pretending to support them in public and then cowardly gutting them with signing statements.